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Guild Wars: Eye of the North -- Story Time with Jeff Grubb

Delsyn spends time with the wordsmith of Guild Wars: Nightfall to talk about creating the frozen world of Eye of the North.

Jeff Grubb likes to talk. And talk. And talk and talk and talk and talk. It's a mark of just how much Grubb likes to chatter and how passionate he gets about his subject that during our conversation he had to be interrupted by ArenaNet's head of marketing to remind him that he had more than a few other interviews scheduled that day, otherwise we might still be talking. Grubb is a storyteller, a good one, as evidenced by his work on the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance worlds and the many licensed novels he's written over years including books based on WarCraft and Starcraft. It's tough not to get caught up in his storyteller's spell as he waxes poetic about his latest project, the Guild Wars expansion, Eye of the North.

"I like to call myself the 'embedded writer,'" Grubb jokes as we start our conversation. "My actual title is 'Game Designer' which is a little bit misleading. ArenaNet is a very flat organization and I work alongside a lot of very talented game designers, artists and other writers who make much greater contributions than I do." From a functional perspective, Grubb's primary responsibility is the storyline for Eye of the North. This is not a small responsibility nor, as Grubb points out, is it as easy as creating a group of characters and situations and trusting that programmers and artists will make the writer's brilliant visions come to fruition. According to Grubb, the process is both more iterative and collaborative than that.

"Keep in mind that I come from a paper and pencil RPG background," Grubb says when discussing the process of creating the story for Eye of the North. "I tend to stick with a more European method of game design that was popular in that world." According to Grubb, American game designers tend to follow a method of game design he refers to as the "building to 'X'" model. "American games tend to be built around an idea or a particular story, concept or intellectual property. The mechanics are then derived from the need to support and give expression to the central concept." European games tend to start from the mechanics first and then build the story, world and characters around it. He's quick to note that neither method is inherently superior and both can result in good games (he cites Turbine's The Lord of the Rings Online as an example of a good game created via the American method -- building to the Tolkien IP), but each may be applicable to different situations.

"In the case of Guild Wars, ArenaNet had the chance to establish their own universe, so it just made sense to start with fun game mechanics and build the story and characters around them," Grubb said. "We always start by asking 'What are the values of Guild Wars? What values is the player looking to express when he or she creates a Guild Wars character? What are the challenges that the player faces in expressing them?'" According to Grubb, the key value of Guild Wars is that people need friends. Players have limited resources and only a limited number of skills they can bring into certain game situations and they need buddies guarding their backs to triumph. There's also an inherently positive perspective to the Guild Wars experience. Players are heroes and while the forces of darkness are powerful, there's an expectation that the good guys can and will be triumphant. "The 'noir' thing doesn't really work in Guild Wars," Grubb laughs.

This impacted the way Grubb and his colleagues approached the initial construction of Eye of the North's storyline. "She's beautiful, isn't she?" he said, pointing to a promotional Eye of the North poster that's been mounted on the wall of the ArenaNet conference room. As with most of the marketing materials for the game, it features Jora, the leggy blonde Norn fighter who bears a startling resemblance to actress Daryl Hannah. "Jora's an important part of Eye of the North, but hardly the central character," Grubb said. "Eye of the North is an ensemble piece. It's about the whole beings greater than the sum of the parts. You have the interpersonal relationships between the signature characters that mirror those the players themselves develop. That what makes it interesting to be a part of."